Christopher Dodd

Mr. DODD

Mr. DODD. Madam President, reserving the right to object--I will not object--I urge Members who have opening statements to make on this bill to come to the floor between now and 3:15. Obviously, later in the day during consideration of amendments Members can make whatever statements they wish. But to have some coherency to the remarks, this would be the appropriate time to do so. We urge Members to come to the floor.

Mr. DODD. Madam President, I yield 30 minutes to the distinguished Senator from Wisconsin, Mr. Feingold.

Mr. DODD. Madam President, I commend Russ Feingold and John McCain. This has been a long battle, going back years now. Nobody is claiming perfection. We are sailing into uncharted waters when we engage in the reform of a campaign financing system, but I underscore what Senator Reid of Nevada has said: A system that has over $23 million spent to win the votes of a State with a million and a half people is a system totally out of control. These two Senators have taken the lead. I think America appreciates what they are trying to do. Our fervent hope is that before this debate concludes, either later this week or at the end of next week, this body, for the first time in more than a quarter century, will have substantially reformed a political process--not made it perfect. We should not hold that out as a possibility, but we can certainly make it better than it presently is.

Mr. DODD. I see my colleague from Mississippi here. How much time does the distinguished Senator need? Five minutes?

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I am happy to yield 3 minutes--5 minutes, whatever my colleague from Michigan----

Mr. DODD. I yield 5 minutes to my colleague from Michigan.

Mr. DODD. This has been helpful. I commend my colleagues from Arizona and Wisconsin, and my colleague from Michigan, who always gives an eloquent statement, along with Harry Reid and the Senator from Mississippi. I commend Senator Hagel and Senator McConnell for expressing their points of view on one of the most significant debates we are apt to have in this Congress; that is, over the very issue of how we raise the necessary dollars to campaign for the very offices which we hold and which we seek reelection to not only here but in the other body. It has been fascinating to note over the last 25 years that we have had public financing for Presidential races; every single candidate, both Democrat and Republican, going back to the late 1970s, has supported and used public financing, along with the limits imposed as a result of accepting public dollars to campaign for the Presidency of the United States. We are not yet debating a public financing mechanism for races in the House and the Senate. Depending on the outcome of this debate, at some future date that may be the case. I have supported public financing in the past and believe it is the way we can end up without any constitutional question of limiting the amount of dollars that come into campaigns and other restrictions we may believe appropriate on how we conduct our efforts to seek Federal office in this country. The bottom line is clear. Whether you agree with public financing or not, the point articulated by the Senator from Wisconsin, the Senator from Arizona, and others is that this system is broken. It is a failed system. When you have to spend the hours we do every day for 6 years conducting a Senate campaign--and I don't envy candidates from New York, California, Florida, Texas, Illinois, where the cost of seeking a Senate seat in those States has moved to $15-, $20-, $30 million--when you must raise, as the Senator from California pointed out, $10,000 a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year for 6 years in order to compete for the Senate seat in that State, and if someone turns around and says there is not enough money in politics, I wonder on what planet they are living. If you have to raise $10,000 a day, plus being a Senator to represent your State, go to your committee hearings, meet constituency groups, answer the phone, send out the mail, the system is not broken? The system is not flawed? This is incredible. It has been said by the authors of the bill, it is not a perfect proposal. I regret it is not the earlier McCain-Feingold proposal. There is some unevenness in the bill in applying provisions where this is applicable to some groups and organizations and not others. I am told that is the political reality. I am not comfortable with that as a reason why we don't have a level playing field for all groups. This is the one chance we will have to do something about this system. It is the one chance remaining to try to make meaningful changes in the law. If it is not perfect, if there are unintended consequences, we can come back and arrange or correct that. But we shouldn't not do anything and leave the system as it presently is constructed. It is hard enough to get people to vote today, to participate, to support those who seek public office. I am not going to suggest that automatically we are going to have some great conversion on the road to Damascus where all of a sudden the mass of the American voting public will collectively say, hallelujah, the system has been cleaned up and we can now all engage in the support of our candidates because McCain- Feingold is adopted. That is naive. But I do believe the American public will respond favorably if this Senate in these next 2 weeks adopts the McCain-Feingold legislation and says: While we haven't dramatically changed the system, we have improved it dramatically. That is my hope.

Mr. DODD. How much more time?

Mr. DODD. I know my colleague from California seeks 15 minutes, and I presume others may follow. Why don't you take 10, and that will leave us plenty of time for the Senator from California. Why don't we make it 7. In that way, we have a little more room.

Mr. DODD. Madam President, how much time remains?

Mr. DODD. On both sides?

Mr. DODD. How much time remains on this amendment?

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I yield myself 5 minutes. Mr. President, I have great affection for my colleague from New Mexico. He is one of my best friends in the Senate. Even though we are of different political parties, we do a lot of work together. I admire him immensely as a Senator, and, more importantly, I cherish his friendship. But I disagree with him on this amendment. I understand the arguments being made. In fact, I have been through a campaign where I in fact faced an opponent who was going to spend--at least he threatened to spend--a substantial part of his personal wealth to defeat me. So I am more than familiar with how this can work. It turned out he didn't spend all that money he said he was going to. But at least the threat was there. I know what it means to be sitting there in the campaign wondering whether or not you see a person who endlessly writes personal checks in a campaign. I understand the motivations behind this and the concerns about it. But I think the amendment as crafted lacks some proportionality and balance. I admire the effort to try to come up with various triggers that kick in if a candidate relies upon his personal wealth for campaign funds. But this amendment doesn't take into consideration the size of various States. A $500,000 commitment of personal funds in Rhode Island, or Delaware, or even Connecticut certainly might cause an opponent to pause. In Texas, Illinois, Florida, and California, that amount of funding hardly represents a commitment of personal resources. Today, that is nothing more than a second mortgage on a home. And a trigger allowing three times the allowable funds to be used, I think, is unnecessary at that level of personal funds. If you are getting to $750,000 or $1 million, again, in a large State, where a $20 or $30 million race is going to occur, I do not think that amount necessarily is going to pose a great threat. Remember, we are talking, in many instances, about challengers. We are incumbents. As incumbents, we have a lot of advantages that do not come out of our personal checkbooks. Obviously, if we are e-mailing our constituents, responding to mail, having telephone services, and the like, we have an advantage that obviously gives us the upper hand in many instances when facing a challenger who may have personal wealth or may decide they are going to put at risk their family resources to run for public office. I do not want to be in a position where we gut the McCain-Feingold bill because of a $500,000, or $750,000, commitment in a race that may cost, on average, today $15 or $20 million. That, it seems to me, is not proportional. It does not rise to that level. And that would be the net effect, if I understand the amendment correctly. If a candidate commits $1 million of personal resources, then all the limits on coordinated party contributions come off for the challenger. And the challenger is permitted to have five times the allowable individual contribution limits. The result is a million-dollar personal commitment by one candidate being met with a potential $10 million party expenditure by the challenger. It seems to me that would defeat the very purpose of what we are trying to achieve with the underlying McCain-Feingold legislation. In addition, obviously, PAC contributions rise to $25,000 per election, above the $5,000 limitations right now, once that threshold of $750,000 has been met, as I understand it. So I think there is a way, maybe, to address this issue, but I think this amendment goes too far. It really does undo, at a very low threshold level, a lot of what is trying to be achieved by the McCain- Feingold proposal. Again, I understand those who object to the underlying McCain- Feingold legislation, the thrust of it. But if you basically agree with what John McCain and Russ Feingold are trying to achieve with this bill--reducing the amount of money in the system--if you think that is the right track to be on, then adopting or supporting this amendment is a direct contradiction, it seems to me. I understand if you are opposed to McCain-Feingold, then this is one quick way to sort of gut it, to undercut it. Mr. President, I ask for one additional minute, if I can.

Mr. DODD. So if you want to basically gut the bill, then this is the amendment, it seems to me. The very first amendment we are dealing with here on this bill, the very first effort out of the box, is to undermine what we are trying to achieve. Again, I respect what my colleagues are trying to do, as someone who has faced opponents in the past who have at least threatened to spend significant personal wealth in a campaign. That can be intimidating. But what you do not want to have happen is the mere expenditure, or the announcement of an expenditure, of equal or greater than $500,000, $750,000 or $1 million triggering off the contribution limits. In Connecticut that would be a lot of money. But if you are going to get involved in a race that uses the New York media, for instance, a race that in Connecticut would be $5 or $6 million, could quickly mushroom to $10 million. And $1 million of personal wealth, while it is a lot of money, that certainly then could unleash $10 million or $15 million once the party limits are off. And the party limits would come off with that $1 million commitment. I think that would be a mistake. So I urge my colleagues who are thinking about supporting this amendment, who simultaneously want to see McCain-Feingold become the law of the land, to think twice about this amendment.

Mr. DODD. I am happy to yield.

Mr. DODD. I think it would. There may be some merit we can seek out at some point. We are going to be on this bill for the next 2 weeks. It seems to me, if there is value in trying to do something here, we ought to be willing to talk about it. If we come out of the box and adopt this amendment, it seems to me then it would be a major setback in what we are trying to achieve in the McCain-Feingold legislation. I urge those who would be tempted to support this bill to resist doing so, and those who are sponsoring this amendment, if the amendment is, in fact, defeated or tabled, to go back to the drawing board and take another look at how this might be achieved. But this particular proposal, I think, eviscerates what Senator McCain and Senator Feingold are trying to achieve and what those of us supporting them would like to see accomplished.

Mr. DODD. I am happy to yield my colleague 2 minutes.

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I say to my colleague from Kentucky that we are prepared to yield back whatever time we have on this amendment. I ask unanimous consent, if I don't have time, I may yield 1 minute to the distinguished Senator from Arizona.

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, just as a suggestion to my colleagues, under this unanimous consent agreement, the only way the amendment could be set aside would be, I suppose, a motion asking unanimous consent to set aside or withdraw the amendment. That is something on which the authors of the amendment must make a decision. It seems to me we are fairly close to something that might be agreeable. I don't think it serves the interests of the Senate to have a vote on something where it goes down and then comes back again. It seems to me, if the authors of the amendment and the authors of the principal legislation feel as though they are fairly close to something they might agree on, it would make some sense, rather than putting the Senate through a vote, to ask unanimous consent that the amendment be withdrawn. We can go on to another matter and then come back to something we may agree on. We may not ultimately. I don't see the value in having the Senate march down here and cast 100 votes on something that is going to be changed or modified at some later point anyway. I urge the authors to consider that for the minute that we have before the vote must occur. It seems to me that is a more prudent way to proceed. I yield 2 minutes, if I have them, to the Senator from Wisconsin.

Mr. DODD. If the Senator will withhold on the quorum call, I would like to be heard. I hear my colleague from Kentucky. The reason we object to a modification at this point is because of what the Senator from Arizona had to say. This is a complicated amendment, with four different triggers involved. It seems to me the size of States is relevant, where $500,000 in Idaho or Connecticut would provoke one response, whereas in California it is something entirely different. The modification is being objected to for the reason that it is a complicated amendment and it is only fair that the authors of the bill spend a little time to look at the implications. My suggestion of asking unanimous consent to withdraw the amendment at this point--I don't know about the authors of the underlying bill, but I am prepared to concede the next amendment to the Republican side and let them go first again. This is an important enough issue that we ought to try to reach out to one another, and rather than having 100 votes cast on this amendment as some bellwether of where we stand, and if there is an opportunity to reach a compromise, let's do that, and I would concede that the next amendment be offered by the Republican side to avoid any conflict.

Mr. DODD. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. DODD. In light of the events that just unfolded here, we don't have a specific amendment ready to offer at this particular point. As I understand it, there will be no more votes this evening. We encourage Members who have not made opening statements on this bill, who are here on the floor, to do so tonight, and then with some consultation between the two of us and others interested, we will try to come up with an amendment this evening to go tomorrow. I don't know what the timeframe will be tomorrow. The leader is here. I don't know what the agenda will be, what time we will start, but we will certainly give you ample notice ahead of time what the amendment will be.

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I am happy to yield 3 minutes to my colleague from Michigan, Senator Levin.

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, if my colleague will yield, we went through this discussion on the Domenici proposal. It may very well may be that we will offer something that would accommodate what the Senator from New Mexico is proposing. If that could be worked out, that may be the next amendment. I think we might be able to do that. If we are unable to do that, obviously we will have another amendment to offer right away. I know the leader indicated that on tomorrow he would like to have a vote by 12:30. If we come in at 9:30, we will have an amendment to offer, and we will be right on the schedule that the leader laid out some days ago.

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I am about to make a motion to table. I urge my colleagues to support it. This amendment, if adopted, would gut the McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill, in my opinion. I move to table the amendment and ask for the yeas and nays.